Hello again! So glad to see y’all along with me for the ride Halloween blogging, or, as I call it……BLOGTOBERFEST……..

Today’s recipe is not a mocktail, but a straight up liquor fest. It was a choice between this and chocolate martinis. I chose this because it looks like fruit punch. (What, me drinking? Nah, this is fruit punch.) And I love sangria.

Preparation:

Pour wine in the pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the lemon and orange into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and add sugar and brandy. Chill overnight. Add ginger ale or club soda just before serving.

If you’d like to serve right away, use chilled red wine and serve over lots of ice.

Synopsis: A popular college student graciously accepts a social outcast’s online friend request, but soon finds herself fighting a demonic presence that wants to make her lonely by killing her closest friends.

Genre: Horror

Opinion:

Let’s face it, most of us live online these days, especially those under 30. Between online dating and online classes, people find themselves either at the computer or on their cell phones. People are judged by the number of friends they have on social media or the number of likes they have on a post. Some people pay good money to acquire followers and/or garner even more interest in their online musings.

Okay, you might be saying, it’s a movie review, Dahlia, get to the damn point. All right then. I say all that to say is when we see a post with no likes or a person with a low number of “friends” or “followers”, we assume that means low popularity. And of course, someone with low popularity online is to be pitied and “felt sorry for”

And now we come to the crux of this movie. A popular college student receives a friend request from a girl who doesn’t have any friends. Feeling sorry for her, she “friends” her. The relationship then degenerated into a sort of stalker/stalkee symbiosis, with the popular college student trying to get away from the cloying, smothering of her new “friend”.

After cutting off the friendship, the girl commits suicide and posts the video on the popular girl’s social media page. This leads to her losing online friends and then DUN DUN DUN, she begins losing friends in real life….TO MURDER MOST FOUL.

Anyhoo, the rest of the movie invovles her tracking down and trying to eliminate the girl’s ghost, who is apparently causing all the trouble. Will she succeed? You’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

All in all, it wasn’t the best horror movie I’ve seen, but I thought the premise was interesting. It is well-acted and well-shot with some disturbing imagery, but I must say the movie does contain an almost paint by the numbers list of horror cliches, including jump scares with stinger chords. Despite these flaws, it’s moderately intriguing and is a good movie to have on in the background.

Let’s face it, the holidays start earlier and earlier every year. I saw a six foot light up snowman in Costco at the end of August. Therefore, I see no reason not to begin the celebration of all things spooky, macabre, and scary in the month of October.

You faithful readers of my blog: I thank you. AND you already know what’s going to be happening. Recipes, Top 3 lists, Top 5 lists, spooky songs, movies, books….everything relating to the theme of Halloween and horror. Click over every day to see something new!

So pour yourself a Bloody Mary with bacon garnish and come on along for the ride. We’ve been expecting you.

Greetings all and Happy October!

Over here in New Jersey, USA, it’s hurricane season, which means the winds are blowing and the skies are deliciously overcast. Rain falls, mist gathers and there’s fog in the mornings. A perfect start to October, wouldn’t you say?

So what are these must see events, you’re asking? With no further ado, let’s get the list going.

Black Speculative Fiction Month

Speculative fiction: (according to Wikipedia):
Speculative fiction is a broad category of narrative fiction that includes elements, settings and characters created out of imagination and speculation rather than based on reality and everyday life. It encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, horror, alternative history, and magic realism.[1][2][3] It typically strays strongly from reality and so may feature fictional types of beings like mythical creatures and supernatural entities, technologies that do not exist in real life like time machines and interstellar spaceships, or magical or otherwise scientifically inexplicable elements. The term’s popularity is sometimes attributed to Robert Heinlein, who referenced it in 1947 in an editorial essay, although there are prior mentions of speculative fiction, or its variant “speculative literature”.

Easy enough, right? This is by no means a complete list, just something to get you started.

Charred Remains Horror Trivia 2016:

Char of Charred Remains Treat for Trivia Horror Game. Beginning end of September through October 31st. A test of player’s horror knowledge. High scores will win prizes. Game rules on www.charredremainsreviews.com

We all know ’em, don’t we? The friend of a friend of my cousin who….they all start out that way and always end badly for that sort-of person we kinda know. They even made a movie (or three) about it, then there was that television series that acted them out (badly) for you.

Let’s talk about a few of these, shall we? And remember to leave the light on….

The Clown Statue Murderer: An Urban Legend

The story of the clown statue murderer is an urban legend. It is not a true story but can spark fear in anyone who reads it. It has been passed around as a chain letter online since 2004.

Here is the story:

“A girl in her teens is babysitting for a family in Newport Beach, Ca. The family is wealthy and has a very large house – you know the sort, with a ridiculous amount of rooms. Anyways, the parents are going out for a late dinner/movie. The father tells the babysitter that once the children are in bed she should go into this specific room (he doesn’t really want her wandering around the house) and watch TV there.

The parents take off and soon she gets the kids into bed and goes to the room to watch TV. She tries watching TV, but she is disturbed by a clown statue in the corner of the room. She tries to ignore it for as long as possible, but it starts freaking her out so much that she can’t handle it.

She resorts to calling the father and asks, “Hey, the kids are in bed, but is it okay if I switch rooms? This clown statue is really creeping me out.”

The father says seriously, “Get the kids, go next door and call 911.”

She asks, “What’s going on?”

He responds, “Just go next door and once you call the police, call me back.”

She gets the kids, goes next door, and calls the police. When the police are on the way, she calls the father back and asks, “So, really, what’s going on?”

He responds, “We don’t HAVE a clown statue.” He then further explains that the children have been complaining about a clown watching them as they sleep. He and his wife had just blown it off, assuming that they were having nightmares.

The police arrive and apprehend the “clown,” who turns out to be a midget. A midget clown! I guess he was some homeless person dressed as a clown, who somehow got into the house and had been living there for several weeks. He would come into the kids’ rooms at nights and watch them while they slept. As the house was so large, he was able to avoid detection, surviving off their food, etc. He had been in the TV room right before the babysitter right came in there. When she entered he didn’t have enough time to hide, so he just froze in place and pretended to be a statue.

Yeah. As I said earlier on a discussion group, between IT and John Wayne Gacy, I don’t have any time for clowns.

And another to make your hair stand on end. This is an oldie but a still a goodie:

The Killer in the Backseat….

One night a woman went out for drinks with her girlfriends. She left the bar fairly late at night, got in her car and onto the deserted highway. After a few minutes she noticed a lone pair of headlights in her rear-view mirror, approaching at a pace just slightly quicker than hers. As the car pulled up behind her she glanced and saw the turn signal on — the car was going to pass — when suddenly it swerved back behind her, pulled up dangerously close to her tailgate and the brights flashed.

Now she was getting nervous. The lights dimmed for a moment and then the brights came back on and the car behind her surged forward. The frightened woman struggled to keep her eyes on the road and fought the urge to look at the car behind her. Finally, her exit approached but the car continued to follow, flashing the brights periodically.

Through every stoplight and turn, it followed her until she pulled into her driveway. She figured her only hope was to make a mad dash into the house and call the police. As she flew from the car, so did the driver of the car behind her — and he screamed, “Lock the door and call the police! Call 911!”

When the police arrived the horrible truth was finally revealed to the woman. The man in the car had been trying to save her. As he pulled up behind her and his headlights illuminated her car, he saw the silhouette of a man with a butcher knife rising up from the back seat to stab her, so he flashed his brights and the figure crouched back down.